What a difference a year makes! Just after World War II, hundreds of French citizens who like Maréchal Pétain and Pierre Laval collaborated with the Nazi regime, became "resistance fighters." So it seems in Germany as well, as tens of thousands, perhaps millions of Germans who shouted "Heil Hitler" became "disgusted" with everything to do with Nazism, particularly with the Holocaust. With the film "Harlan-In the Shadow of Jew Süss," writer-director Felix Moeller deals with a filmmaker who quite obviously collaborated with the Nazi ideology in that he made anti-Semitic films while glorifying the Third Reich but who, like Adolf Eichmann and so many other top criminals, caviled that they were forced to do as the apparatchiks commanded.
HARLAN-IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS (Harlan-Im Schatten von Jud Süß)
Zeitgeist Films
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Felix Moeller
Written By: Felix Moeller
Cast: Stefan Drössler, Caspar Harlan, Veit Harlan, Kristina Söderbaum, Jan Harlan, Kristian Harlan, Thomas Harlan, Maria Körber, Christiane Kubrick, Jessica Jacoby, Chester Harlan, Lotte, Nele and Lena Harlan
Screened at: Critics' DVD, NYC, 2/5/10
Opens: March 3, 2010 at New York's Film Forum, 209 W. Houston Street.
In the case of Veit Harlan-a name that even some film scholars may not recognize as one of 20th Century Germany's major directors-the man knocked out no small number of movies including melodramas that today would be considered kitsch, but more importantly put together one politically slanted dramatization based on the life of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, an advisor to a duke during the first half of the eighteenth century, a man who allegedly raised taxes, plundered the people, and forced himself on a married Christian woman.
Not enough clips are shown of that film, which was made in 1940 (seemingly censored in Germany and not available at Netflix) to see the full shame of director Harlan. Instead Felix Moeller uses his ninety-nine minutes mostly to explore the ways that Harlan's family react today to the man who was, respectively, a father, grandfather, and uncle. Only one of the interviewed Harlan family insists that while he and others with the Harlan name are reviled, his own feelings were "nobody's business." Others in the family, two generations of relatives, seem all too eager to express disgust with their namesake, some even changing their names to avoid retribution. One such relation states that while she was not brought up by Viet Harlan, she believes she has "bad blood, the wrong genes," an unfortunate and doubtless specious idea which had been used by anti-Semites to condemn modern Jews to this day for the death of Christ.
Commissioned by Joseph Goebbels to direct this work of blatant propaganda, Veit Harlan in 1940 put together a film showing the title character not in the guise of the bearded stereotype popularly considered by anti-Semites but as a member of the nobility, villainous mustache, who abuses his power to oppress the people under his jurisdiction. "Jud Süß" was required viewing for all members of the SS and concentration camp teams. Much as we in the audience might need to see more clips from the film to judge just how rotten this Veit Harlan was, Moeller instead makes (in my view) a grievous error in launching a parade of talking heads, most of whom repeat what the views of the previous kin, almost all condemning their relative (who died in 1964) for making a movie that serves as a "death weapon." Veit Harlan's daughter, Maria Körber (she had taken the name of her mother, Hilde Körber) is the most energetic speaker. Others include Caspar Harlan, Veit's son from the director's third wife, Kristina Söderbaum. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for what his dad's oeuvre, he turned into a filmmaker, screenwriter, and playwright. Among the assorted talking heads are Jan Harlan, Veit's nephew; Christiane Kubrick, his niece (who married Stanley Kubrick in 1958); granddaughter Alice Harlan, now living in Paris; and three granddaughters.
While largely forgotten, one of Germany's favorite actresses at the time, Harlan's Swedish-born third wife, Kristina Söderbaum, gets some screen time in various roles. In one scene depicted here, Söderbaum inhabits the role of a beautiful woman who cries at her mother's grave, determined to join her in suicide. Harlan's most notable postwar movie, "Kolberg," deals with the time that during Napoleon's victorious campaign in Germany, the city of Kolberg gets isolated from the retreating Prussian forces. The population of Kolberg refuses to capitulate and organizes the resistance against the French army, which immediately submits the city to massive bombardments. Harlan was attracted not only to the Nazi ideology and to nationalistic glorification of German history but also to melodramas featuring death.
This entire documentary, then, while almost mandatory viewing for those with an interest in the Nazi era particularly in its opening up thoughts of the title director's guilt or naivete, is encumbered by too much talk, not enough archival material. It is nonetheless a respectful study of two generations of family members of a man who shares with Leni Riefenstahl the contempt of a new breed of German citizenry.
HARLAN-IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS (Harlan-Im Schatten von Jud Süß)
Zeitgeist Films
Unrated. 99 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
